


Cups of Tea

by simplycursive



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Inktober 2019, M/M, can be read as platonic or Not Platonic as you like (i of course always read jm as non platonic), jonmartin, minor spoilers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 05:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20869016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycursive/pseuds/simplycursive
Summary: "They say there's a ghost in the archives..." (An Inktober one-shot based on art by @roboomic on tumblr/twitter)





	Cups of Tea

**Author's Note:**

> No editing, we die like men!
> 
> No but seriously, I can't be bothered to edit every single Inktober one-shot, so enjoy this mess.
> 
> https://inktober.com/rules

Inktober (for writing!) Day 2 ~ Mindless

Inspired by this wonderful piece of art by @roboomic on tumblr and twitter:

[ https://roboomic.tumblr.com/post/187171611922/they-say-theres-a-ghost-in-the-archives ](https://roboomic.tumblr.com/post/187171611922/they-say-theres-a-ghost-in-the-archives)

  
  


The first time a hot cup of tea appears on his desk, seemingly out of nowhere, Jon damn near loses his mind.

Jon knows spooky. He  _ understands  _ spooky. He works at The Magnus Institute, of course he knows spooky. People come in every day and tell him their stories about this or that possibly paranormal incident, and when there aren’t people in the flesh, he reads the statements they had given in past years about possibly paranormal incidents. Sometimes they even use the word spooky. Martin hadn’t been exaggerating when he had announced Jon’s hatred of the word. But at least it’s something he understands. Spooky doesn’t have to mean paranormal, but it can. When it doesn’t, well, you get moments like this.

The trance is lifted as Jon comes to the end of his current statement, and it takes him a moment to realize anything has changed. He still hasn’t made up his mind about whether or not he dislikes the fog that seems to fill his head when he records statements, but it’s part of the job so he doesn’t have much room to complain even if he wanted to. “Recording ends,” he mutters as he shuts off the tape recorder. This begins his usual ritual of coming back to real life after a statement. A hand comes up to rub over his face, the familiar motion of rubbing sleep from his eyes despite the fact that no sleep was had. Then the hand drags up and through his hair, pulling the fallen strands back into place as he slowly sits up. The cracking sounds that come from his back remind him about how terrible his recording posture is. One of these days he’ll have to get a back brace, if he doesn’t get scoliosis first.

When the facts burst into his mind telling him that, no, bad posture cannot cause scoliosis, Jon waves them away. He was being hyperbolic, surely the Eye knows that. Not that the Eye seems to care much for hyperbole, or for metaphor, synonyms, or any other inexact rendition of any information ever. Jon groans. There goes his sense of humor.

Then finally his eyes land on the mug. When had that shown up there? It’s not sitting precariously close to the tape recorder, so it’s possible one of the staff had simply come in and dropped it off quietly before leaving again. In that case, though, wouldn’t Jon have at least noticed them come in? The Eye is unhelpfully silent now. Apparently ‘Where did this mysterious cup of hot tea come from?’ is not important enough of a question to help Jon answer it. He sighs, then wraps his thin fingers around the handle and brings it up to his mouth. The steam rolls over his lips before he takes a sip, and when the deep amber liquid reaches his mouth, the archivist instantly recoils. The tea isn’t just hot. It’s scalding. Whoever had brought it had been here only moments before, or they must have in order to get the tea to him at such a mouth-burning temperature.

Jon sets the tea back down, laces his fingers together, and stares at the mug. 

The mug itself is nondescript, one of the assortment of mugs from the kitchenette. Before The Unknowing, he would have chalked the mysterious appearance up to Martin sneaking in while he had been recording, but it’s been weeks since he last saw Martin. Even so, Jon’s pretty sure that Peter wouldn’t be too keen on Martin sneaking about and dropping off mugs of tea for his coworkers. That would kind of defeat the whole purpose of isolating Martin to begin with.

So Martin’s off the table for now. With Melanie avoiding him so often now, that leaves Basira and Daisy. Somehow, sneaking into his office to leave a cup of hot tea seems like too friendly a gesture for either of the two of them right now. It’s possible they would do it for each other, but the archival staff tends to avoid Jon now. But who could know for sure? Since being stuffed into that coffin, Daisy had changed quite a lot. All her sharp edges were sanded off into rough but rounded shapes now. Is it possible the Buried had forced her to go so soft that she is now the kind of person who does... _ this?  _ Jon scoffs even as he picks up the mug once more to blow on the surface of the tea. No, he’s pretty sure she hasn’t changed  _ that  _ much. And Basira, well, Basira might be the most likely candidate. But even so, she never seems to do things for Jon that aren’t almost entirely begrudging. Certainly not without making some kind of show of it. If she had brought him tea, he’s pretty sure she would have outright interrupted his recording to announce that she had done so. Or maybe not. Maybe he has misjudged her.

This line of thinking is leading him nowhere, so Jon brings his mind back around to the tea in his hand. It’s only then that he bothers to check the time on his watch. Time always distorts when he reads statements, so he’s not surprised to find that much more time had passed than he had thought. That does leave him with an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, though. If that much time had passed, that would have left him with more than enough time to wrap up the statement, get up, walk to the kitchenette, make tea, then walk back. The trouble is, wouldn’t he have remembered doing so? Surely he would have remembered  _ something  _ of the trip, short though it would have been.

Is it possible he had simply...blacked out? Had he gone to make himself tea like a sleepwalker, then erased the time spent from his memory in order to convince himself that maybe there is someone in the archive that still cares about his emotional wellbeing? That seems too depressing of an idea even for Jon. He would rather have just made himself tea than go through this stupid process of trying to  _ deduce  _ how in the hell a hot cup of tea had found its way to his desk.

The whole incident riles him up so much that Jon decides to take a walk to blow off steam. Maybe he’ll go grab a sandwich from that place Martin likes so much while he’s at it.

When he returns to his desk half an hour later, the mug is gone.

_ Oh, that’s just not fair,  _ Jon thinks with a scowl,  _ it was  _ definitely  _ there. _

~

A few days later, it happens again.

This time when the mug appears, Jon notices it almost instantly. He had been in the middle of reading a statement and hadn’t heard the door whisper open, but he does notice the slight rattle of ceramic on wood. Once again, in the same place as before, there’s a steaming mug of tea. It’s a different mug this time, but the déjà vu is so strong that Jon looks up from the mug and whirls his head around to see if he can spot the culprit. This time, like last time, there seems to be no one around.

Had he left the door open when he sat down to record? Strange. He usually doesn’t.

Jon has no choice but to continue reading his statement, being halfway through it as he is. If he doesn’t finish it now, it will nag at his mind with increasing levels of intensity as time goes by until he  _ does  _ finish the recording. He’s done this enough by now that he knows the repercussions of stopping midway through a statement. The memory of the headache he got from it last time is enough to spur him right back to reading.

When he clicks off the recorder, Jon picks up the mug and sighs. It’s drinkable this time, since it had been sitting on the desk through half a recording. The taste reminds him of something, though he can’t quite remember what. Even though they all use the same teas, everyone in the office has their own way of making it so that it becomes possible to tell when it isn’t the same person making a cup of tea every time. Jon usually just drinks it down without noticing the differences, but he can still tell that this tea is familiar to him in the way that it isn’t when Basira or Daisy make it. It tasted the same way last time, too. At least, Jon’s pretty sure it did.

So either Jon blacked out and made a cup of tea again, or Jon has a pretty good idea of the identity of the tea ghost.

~

At the end of his statement, Jon drops his head into his hands and scrubs at his face. He hasn’t been sleeping well (but when did he ever since he started working in the archives?) and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been eating well since he can’t remember the last thing he’s eaten today. Has he eaten today? He probably should. Maybe after one more statement…

Then Jon feels a hand rest on his back for a moment, firm and definitely real, but when his head shoots up to get a look at whoever it is that has entered his office, the archivist yet again finds the room empty. Or, mostly empty. His lone companion is a steaming cup of tea. It’s been several days since the last tea incident, and the way things are in the archives with never a moment to sit back and not think, Jon has somehow managed to forget about the Mysterious Case of the Apparating Tea. This time it doesn’t throw him into a confused spiral; he’s pretty sure he has a good idea of the culprit now. The brief and gentle hand on his back had pretty much solidified his theory.

Rather than stare at the cup for several minutes like he usually does, Jon smiles at it and picks it up. The warmth of the tea between his hands is surprisingly welcome. Had it always been so cold in the archives? In his office? Either way, the cup of warmth is comforting, and it heats Jon’s thin fingers as he blows on the surface to cool the liquid down. He doesn’t have time to think about this or what it means - either in the grand and overarching sense or in the smaller and more specific sense - but maybe one of these days Jon will manage to catch the tea ghost in the act.

Jon smiles as he thinks of the face Martin will make when he’s caught being Jon’s guardian tea angel, and the tea goes down his throat even smoother than usual and warms the archivist from the inside.

~

The next time Jon hunches over at the end of his statement, a few more days after the last magical appearance of tea on his desk, it’s on purpose and with a specific goal in mind. Jon keeps the position and scrubs what he hopes is convincingly at his face. It’s not like he’s any less tired since the last time he sat in this exact posture after a statement, far from it, but it’s different - slightly more awkward - now that he’s hyper-aware of it and doing it on purpose.

He’s about to give up on his trap when he once again feels that familiar, solid sensation of a hand pressed gently to his back. Before the hand has time to move and Martin has time to leave the tea and escape, Jon’s hand shoots back to grab at where he knows the arm should be. If he had been looking he might not have felt it, but with no vision to deceive Jon’s hand curls firmly around Martin’s arm.

The sound of a startled squeak accompanies Martin’s appearance, and Jon looks up to see a rather disgruntled Martin standing beside him with one arm stretched out and captured in Jon’s grip and the other holding a precariously sloshing mug of hot tea.

“Jon, you- I almost spilled it! And it’s hot! And it would have been your fault, you know-”

“Martin-”

“Look, I’m not even supposed to be here. Peter will have my head if he catches me...socializing, and-”

“Martin!”

Martin finally focuses his attention on Jon, equal parts startled and bewildered. “What?”

Jon takes the moment to smile up at his assistant standing beside him, then reaches for the mug. It’s hot against his fingers since Martin’s holding it by the handle and Jon has to take it by the base, but not as hot as Martin’s fingers when Jon’s own brush against them as he relieves Martin of the tea. Jon doesn’t release Martin just yet; he wants him to hear this.

“Thank you. For the tea.” Then Jon lets Martin go.

Martin lingers for a few moments, blinking several times before smiling back at Jon. He should get going, he really should, but how much can a few more moments hurt?

“Oh, um. Yeah. Course.” Then the tea ghost begins to fade into nothingness once again as he walks toward the door of Jon’s office.

“I mean it!” Jon calls out after him.

“I know,” comes the faded reply.


End file.
